01 May Kamal Bawa and Ajay Sood elected FRS

Prof. Kamal Bawa and Prof. Ajay K. Sood has been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, which is widely considered to be one of the most coveted scientific accolades in the world. They join the elite group of scientists worldwde who are FRS, which included among others Sir Issac Newton, S. Ramanujan and Sir. C. V. Raman.

The citation for Prof. Kamal Bawa reads

Kamal Bawa is an evolutionary ecologist and India's most prominent conservation biologist. His pioneering contributions to understanding the population biology of tropical forest trees led to new strategies for their conservation, and also for the sustainable use of non-timber forest products. On this base he has provided leadership in conservation science in India by establishing ATREE, an influential NGO that generates interdisciplinary knowledge, guides policymaking, disseminates information, and builds human capacity in biodiversity science. Through his work and popular writing Kamal Bawa has promoted international cooperation in science, while also strengthening biodiversity awareness and public support for conservation in Indian civil society.

The citation for Prof. Ajay Sood reads

Professor Sood is today the best Indian experimental physicist working in condensed matter. He has initiated several contemporary research areas such as confined and interface phonons in superlattices, squeezed phonon states produced by femtosecond lasers, and generation of electrical voltage by the flow of liquids (gases) on nanotubes (semiconductors). He is most noted for his seminal contributions to soft matter such as discovery of rheochaos, namely of spatio-temporal chaotic dynamics under shear flow, validation of non-equilibrium fluctuation theorem, anisotropic grain growth under stress and flocking transition in active granular matter. The originality, diversity and significance of Professor Sood’s contributions are truly remarkable and noteworthy. Professor Sood has received the prestigious TWAS Prize in Physics and was till recently the President of the Indian Academy of Sciences. He is one of the important young leaders of Indian science in general and physics in particular.

Kamaljit Singh Bawa (born April 7, 1939 in Punjab, India) is an evolutionary ecologist, conservation biologist and a distinguished professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is also the founder of Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE). In 2012, Bawa received the first Gunnerus Sustainability Award, the world’s major international award for work on sustainability. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Ajay Kumar Sood, is an Indian physicist, researcher and holder of 2 US and 5 Indian patents, known for his pioneering research findings on graphene and nanotechnology. He was honoured by the Government of India, in 2013, by bestowing on him the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award, for his contributions to the fields of science and technology.